Still On The Stump, Sarah?

We continue to discuss Vice Presidential loser Sarah Palin because she remains topical, refusing to "give up the ghost," rattling her old campaign chains and haunting the airwaves with her used-up rhetoric. Today on CNN:

BLITZER: Because, you know, during a campaign, every presidential campaign, things are said, it's tough, as you well know, it gets sometimes pretty fierce out there. And during the campaign, you said this, you said: "This is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America." And then you went on to say: "Someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect that he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

PALIN: Well, I still am concerned about that association with Bill Ayers. And if anybody still wants to talk about it, I will, because this is an unrepentant domestic terrorist who had campaigned to blow up, to destroy our Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol. That's an association that still bothers me. And I think it's still fair to talk about it. However the campaign is over. That chapter is closed. Now is the time to move on and to, again, make sure that all of us are doing all that we can to progress this nation.

Sigh . . . will someone tell this nitwit she lost the election. Even Quayle got the "hint" in '92 (you know - the hint of election results) and skedaddled. And if you are indeed still campaigning for some conjectural office, then I once again demand your full medical records, presumptive mother of Trig.

As long as you persist, Palin, the Potatoe will continue to hold up the mirror. She who hath not associated . . .

The Election Year Coda of Bill Ayers

With the votes counted, William Ayers, former leader of the Weather Underground, "unrepentant terrorist," Obama's "pal," speaks on his prior dealings with the President-Elect and inculpates Hillary Clinton as the but-for cause for GOP character assailments:

During the primary, the blogosphere was full of chatter about my relationship with President-elect Barack Obama. We had served together on the board of the Woods Foundation and knew one another as neighbors in Chicago’s Hyde Park. In 1996, at a coffee gathering that my wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and I held for him, I made a donation to his campaign for the Illinois State Senate.

Obama’s political rivals and enemies thought they saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest perception that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist who sympathizes with extremism—and they pounced.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) campaign provided the script, which included guilt by association, demonization of people Obama knew (or might have known), creepy questions about his background and dark hints about hidden secrets yet to be uncovered.

He cannot resist the visceral urge to take a cruel, ironically radical cheap shot at John McCain:

It was inevitable. McCain would bet the house on a dishonest and largely discredited vision of the ’60s, which was the defining decade for him. He built his political career on being a prisoner of war in Vietnam . . .

The war in Vietnam was an illegal invasion and occupation, much of it conducted as a war of terror against the civilian population. The U.S. military killed millions of Vietnamese in air raids—like the one conducted by McCain—and entire areas of the country were designated free-fire zones, where American pilots indiscriminately dropped surplus ordinance—an immoral enterprise by any measure.

And he visualizes the tableau conjured up by Governor Palin:

When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got hold of it, the attack went viral. At a now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama was “pallin’ around with terrorists.” (I pictured us sharing a milkshake with two straws.) The crowd began chanting, “Kill him!” “Kill him!” It was downhill from there.

Asked to comment on Bill Ayers's summation of the past few months, Reverend Wright bellowed, "NOT GOD BLESS, MCCAIN. GOD DAMN MCCAIN! NOT JOHN MCCAIN, BUT JOHN MC-K-K-K-CAIN. CHICKENS COMING HOME TO ROOST! WOOOOOOOOO! WOOOOOOOOO!"

Rashid Khalidi and Tony Rezko could not be reached for comment.

Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood?

CHICAGO, Ill. -- Among the other voters who have shown up to vote at Shoesmith Elementary School this morning, where Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., will vote: Louis Farrakhan and William Ayers.

Seriously.

Welcome to the South Side of Chicago.

That's pretty bananas. I wonder who they're voting for?

GOP Gigolo Hugh Hewitt Declares Bill Ayers An "Advisor" to Barack Obama

I'm pretty eager to get a good night's rest. But then the intellectual charlatans now practically running McCain's sputtering campaign just refuse to let me sleep.

Fine. Let's make this brief: Hugh Hewitt is a hebetudinous pig of a commentator and an out-and-out liar. After ignoring the white noise of standard GOP twaddle, my ears perk up as Hewitt offers this dirty fable on Hannity & Colmes: "I often hear in Barack Obama's rhetoric and especially in the rhetoric of some of his advisers Bill Ayers . . ." Pressed that Ayers is, of course, not an advisor to Barack Obama, Hewitt prattles on "he might not be an advisor this year . . . he has a 20 year relationship with Barack Obama."

Repugnant and typical. Even if Barack Obama is elected and elected by a sizable margin - ie., the empirics of a political mandate - GOP hitmen like Hewitt will never embrace him as President and will never accept a unified citizenry trying to work together despite ideological differences. The unthoughtful demagogues of dying Rovian conservatism will tear this country asunder for sh*ts and giggles.

Feigned torpidity, America - the righty hacks play dumb just long enough to stand corrected, but not before foisting their flimflam upon the audience and scoring points. Fortunately for the rest of us, everyone at Fox News or watching Fox News is either irredeemably in the Republican tank or playing watchdog to keep them honest. A forum for independent or undecided voters it is not.

Still, you say things enough times and the Orwellian dystopia emerges turning four fingers into five.

9 Days. Fight it. Earmuff it till the voting booth if you have to.

Alaska Independence Party and the Palins: A Simmering Controversy

Against the better wishes of my fellow contributors, Warm Apple Pie will continue to push this fact-driven story: The Palins' ties to the Alaska Independence Party ("AIP") and the unwillingness of the mainstream media to explore the history of the relationship. There is a ton of unfinished meat on the bone.

Some say this is "out there" already and yesterday's news cycle. But I believe it is ripe for media plucking considering McCain-Palin's incessant push to link Obama to William Ayers.

And others are starting to agree (Colmes to the rescue? Colmes? Say it ain't so, Joe!):



From last evening's Hannity and Colmes. Around minute three, Colmes raises the parallel between the Ayers-Obama attack and the Palins' unchallenged AIP involvement. He notes how Democrats have decided not to play in this pigpen (lipsticked pigpen that is). Former Deputy Governor of Maryland, Republican Michael Steele, after two minutes of usual, overwrought shredding of Obama on his dubious connections (with the help of the always-willing Hannity), suddenly becomes very terse when confronted with AIP allegations, dismissing them as merely "irrelevant."

A simmering controversy, not a stale one. And it is starting to creep out of the blogosphere to the print media.

"Country First" Or "Alaska First," Sarah? Just Who Is Sarah Palin?

Where is Michelle Bachmann when you need her. There is anti-Americanism afoot!

It seems Sarah and Todd Palin were members of the Alaska Independence Party ("AIP"). Its slogan: "Alaska First. Alaska Always." Its platform: Secede from the United States of America and become a sovereign nation at all costs. In the words of its pioneering member, Joe Vogler: "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

More startling, the AIP and Bill Ayers have much in common when it comes to approved tactics. From Talking Points Memo:

The AIP has been described as an extreme-right, anti-government organization comparable to militia movements such as that which carried out the 1995 Oklahoma City attack. The group's aims are voiced no more forcefully than by its founder, Joe Vogler, as CNN observes in direct quotations: "The fires of hell are frozen glaciers compared to my hatred for the American government...," Vogler states in one quotation, "...And I won't be buried under their damn flag." In another quotation, Vogler says: "My government is my worst enemy. I'm going to fight them with any means at hand." As though to leave no doubt in our minds regarding his willingness to use violence to achieve his secessionist aims, Vogler says in one final quote: "I hope we don't have to take human life, but if they go on trampling our property rights, look out, we're ready to die."

Sarah Palin sent the AIP a video greeting welcoming the party delegates to their 2008 convention in Fairbanks, Alaska. There's another clip floating around where the AIP Vice Chairman, sporting a burly, anti-establishment ZZ Top beard, refers to Sarah Palin as a former member of the AIP before she was mayor of Wasilla and is still "sympathetic to her former membership" (after minute six of the attached video). Reportedly, the Palins attended the 1994 AIP Convention in Wasilla, Alaska.

Now, I'm going to need some fact-checking from my fellow contributors, but if this is a verified news story, why doesn't this line of attack effectively end Palin's bid for Vice President and seal McCain's fate? And where is the mainstream media on this?

Not only did she "pal around with secessionist(s)" - here the plural form is warranted - but she married one? Is this not the epitome of Bachmann's Anti-Americanism or the GOP pundit class's "guilt by association?" Let's get some perspective using the besieged Barack Obama - if there was a clip of Senator Obama welcoming the Chicago chapter of Communist Party USA to the United Center on Madison Street, praising the importance of their movement, with the party's chairman affectionately referring to Obama as a former member, how fast would his double-digit cushion evaporate? Bill Ayers set off pipe bombs in government buildings. The AIP wants to lay claim to an entire state and sever it from the Union by any means necessary?

With each passing day, Sarah Palin's hoked-up rhetoric gets more and more deliciously hypocritical and proof-positive of her political meretriciousness.